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Showing posts with label crafting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crafting. Show all posts

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The touch, the smell...



...of homemade playdoh.  Every time I make it, I wonder why I ever bother with the store bought kind. (Oh, because it makes a giant mess of my kitchen and uses up all the flour and salt and then I want to make cookies and I have to cry because there's no salt or flour.)
Also, every time I make it, I start cooking and wonder how this mess is going to turn into pretty playdoh:


But it does - like magic!

Once it cools, I knead it in a big ball, then break it in half and roll the dough into two logs, like so:



I break the logs into three pieces each, and roll into balls... leaving six equal-ish pieces of bland and boring off-white playdoh:


Raina jabs a finger into the middle of each, and helps me squirt in some food coloring.  We use regular old grocery store food coloring, but some day I'll splurge on some liquid watercolors or gel food coloring.  We've also made jello playdoh, which makes nice colors and smells great!


 All rolled and smooshed:


all pretty and stacked.
Wait.  Hold up.  There's a color missing!  


THIS is what happens when you use regular food coloring to attempt purple playdoh.  It's a no-go.  A playdoh no-no no-go.  Uh-oh.


Next to the blue, it looks semi-purple.  But really, it's a gooey mess of blue and red, sort of grey, sort of midnight blue, and all kinds of not pretty or fun to play with.  Blech.


Apparently, the only way to really achieve purple is with the aforementioned liquid watercolor or gel food coloring.  Some day our rainbow playdoh caterpillar will have an appropriately purple behind!


Till then, our Roy G. Biv will be named Roy G. Bi.  
 Still pretty.


Raina's first move?  Stack them up, roll them together.
Figures.  
She loves mixing playdoh.  
And paint.
And assuring me, "It's okay, mumma!  Mixing colors is still pretty!"



We let some plastic animals take a walk through the playdoh rainbow mountain so we could see what kind of tracks they make...




And then we cut the mountain in half to find a SECRET HIDDEN RAINBOW!!!
This, my friends, is mind blowing for the 3 year old set.


And before I knew it, the pretty playdoh was all swirled together.


And yeah, it's still beautiful!

Friday, April 20, 2012

Art man gets a new life

I've had this bendy art man since college.  He was all sad and boring in his unfinished wood outfit.  So Raina and I made him pretty.  

We painted him first.  "ALL colors!," to quote Raina!



Then we modge podge and glittered the heck off this dude.


Now he can stretch with confidence!  


No more plain armpits!  Nothing to be ashamed about!

\

You are beautiful, art man!




I don't know what exactly we are going to do with him now.  I thought he should move into the princess castle, but that idea was vetoed.  For now he sits on a shelf above my sewing table... reminding me to be different.  :)



Then I tried to convince Raina that we should fancy up this little zebra.  I failed.


In case you were unsure, we got messy.  As usual.  


Paint dancing is a perfect way to start your day!








Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Felt flower love

****I've been working on this (incredibly super long and picture-heavy) post for a while now, so if anything seems weird or out-dated, it's because it is :)!  Also, I keep editing, and I've just come to the realization that I'm never going to be satisfied with this 100%... so time to post as is! ****

Ribbon hairbows are pretty, but sometimes you need to mix things up a little.  I bought myself a pile of bright felt and went to town with it!



For the flower patterns I went online and printed off a bunch of templates and black and white drawings of simple flower shapes.  I re-sized some and printed again so I could vary flower sizes and petal sizes.  I also looked at Pinterest for some inspiration, and found TONS of tutorials and patterns.  What did I do before Pinterest? Also, google "felt flower template" and you'll get 101 awesome results.  (And then do a google image search just for "felt," which I did at first by mistake.  SO many cool ideas!)










raina helped with this one!











So, I pinned the tiny (since my flowers are for little girl heads, I kept them small.  You could keep them big if they're for bigger heads!) cut out flower patterns to the felt, and cut around them with sharp scissors.  Some flowers were trickier than others, and I wasn't always exact with cutting.  I used a mix of sewing, fabric glue, tacky glue, and hot glue when assembling/holding together the flower pieces, depending on the design. 







Some of the tutorials I found were more successful than others.  Some were labor intensive, to the point that it just wasn't really worth it.




LOVE these flowers, but they are a lot of work!  You gather each petal individually, then roll and sew the entire thing. 



Beautiful, and painstaking to cut each of these tiny petals!





Some ended up looking like brains!



 Some I love, some I don't.  Those will probably be the ones Raina likes best!


cute from the top...
too tall on the side!





just asking for a button center!





















I made a Pinterest board with some ideas/inspiration/tutorials.  You can find it here: Felt Flower Idea Board